


hitchhike to your heart

by meganekun



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Forgetting To Take Off Costumes as a Plot Device, Hotel Rooms, M/M, Tattoos, a couple of cool headcanons, definitely less heated than you probably expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 04:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8953885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganekun/pseuds/meganekun
Summary: Oh, the insinuations the public would make, if they knew about post-competition rendezvous and brushing knuckles and shoulder-to-shoulders and motorcycle rides as excuses to be close without having to cross self-set lines. 
The tipping moment of a friendship under the conditions of yet another faceless hotel room.





	

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  boy do i have a lot of feelings about these two, together and individually. i have been looking forward to otabek's first appearance since before the show started – i've never seen a central asian character anywhere, ever! and even though imho the show proved they don't particularly care for him, going as far as making big mistakes regarding his heritage (please do your research y'all) i still love him. he's my son.  
>   
> some of the headcanons you may find in this fic:  
> • otabek and his family live in almaty (kazakh spelling alma-ata), but he's originally from a village called atassu  
> • atassu is located in the state qaraghanda which rhymes with the russian word for "yes" (da), it's a joke amongst russian speakers partly because kazakh names tend to be ridiculed rip. i'm not trying to promote that but i feel like lilia would do it no offens e  
> • another fun fact about atassu is that just a few thousand meters away from it is where the first astronaut - who happened to be russian - landed. i reckon the people there are quite proud of that which is where otabek's interest in stars comes from  
>   
> title is from a song very dear to me, **лепестки слёз** (tear petals) by dan balan  & vera brezhneva, which is about being afraid of falling in love because of previous disappointments. :)

 

 

 

 

It’s yet another hotel room.

Yuri doesn’t sneak, but his steps are a careful measure of quiet he doesn’t normally bother with. The tasteless colors around him smudge and fade, as his vision zeroes in on the golden, polished signs against the dark wood of the doors.

Fingers unclenching from the fists that have formed around the sturdy card, he can see the numbers _five, two_ and _zero_ between his nails. There’s dirt underneath them – it always gets there before he knows it, almost like he’s back in kindergarten, pouring water on sand and building castles out of it, only to break them down – and he frowns, because it bothers him that he thinks about whether it would bother _him_ if he didn’t do anything about it.

Yuri rolls his eyes, directed at no one but himself, in this long, empty hallway; it’s basic hygiene, for fuck’s sake. The modern lock opens easily enough, and he slams the door, not making a particular point with it. The lights stay off.

There’s no routine beyond being alone together, even if they do go out, something that has been happening less frequently per Yuri’s request. He doesn’t need the sightseeing, the people, the noise, any of it. Should it get too quiet, there’s always his trusty old phone full of music pulled from YouTube, or the occasional flat screen TV.

Because if Yuri Plisetsky doesn’t do things halfway on the ice, Otabek Altin doesn’t do them off the ice, either.

There’s something good and complementary there, Yuri doesn’t let himself think.

Doesn’t let himself do anything, but simply be in the darkness of an anonymous hotel room, waiting. Oh, the insinuations the public would make, if they knew about post-competition rendezvous and brushing knuckles and shoulder-to-shoulders and motorcycle rides as excuses to be close without having to cross self-set lines.

He doesn’t want to sit down, but does want to change into more comfortable clothes from the casually thrown upon his shoulders jacket above his costume. It doesn’t sparkle as much without fluorescent lights clinging onto his stature, following every so miniscule movement, but still, as Yuri slips the jacket off, he positions himself in front of the big mirror in one of the rooms and watches the tight pull of material against his shoulder blades.

They’ve gotten broader since his senior debut season, they had to. Yakov wasn’t very content, but Yuri was, as he stood in front of the mirror in the old man’s apartment, like he does now, his eyes zeroing in on the crook Otabek’s nose has nuzzled against, last time they met like this. No more than tipsy off a shared bottle of disgustingly fruity German champagne from a local grocery store, they were rather enveloped by the endless waves of easy laughter at mispronounced words and Yuri’s grumpy manner of retelling childhood memories.

Otabek had lingered too long, despite the tension he must have felt in Yuri’s muscles at the no-excuse-proximity. He could have attributed that to the pleasant warmth of the champagne in their bellies, except it wasn’t the first time, and Yuri's own self-control was wearing thin, fizzling away like the fabric of an old hand-me-down sweater, more loose string than knit. Like the wax of the small tea light candles he’d bought on impulse in a city, carrying the purchase to a hotel room Otabek wouldn’t be in, melting to the base until the thread is nearly covered in it, no longer capable of catching fire.

Yuri scoffs. Nobody could rid him of his flame; he wouldn’t give anybody that much power. He’s his own strike. But to allow somebody to re-ignite the spark, from time to time, that just might go with his stubbornness and independence like oil with water.

Otabek – sometimes, when it gets too late to really do something, but not late enough that they have to remind each other to leave – shares with Yuri things he remembers from his lyceum’s curriculum: historical events, physical laws, biological processes and camaraderie (Yuri tells him about music, ballet, fine manners and children’s cruelty).

Yuri's favorite stories are about wild cats’ behavior and life, but he finds himself quite enjoying listening to explanations of how thoughts are really chemicals and electricity, jumping from axon to axon.

When he lies in his bed in Moscow, he thinks of fingerless gloves and resting frowns and wonders if that sort of electricity is different. (It’s not, and he likes that he doesn’t have to pretend it is for it to push the corners of his mouth into an absentminded smile.)

In the end, he decides not to take off his costume, even though the triple axes and quadruple lutzes must have left their mark on it, no matter how much deodorant he sprays on himself. It makes him feel powerful and safe, a little bit of how he feels around Otabek. 

His heart beats with indecisiveness, the culmination a spike in the bottom of his stomach, as if somebody pushed the sharp knife of an ice skate against it, when the lock clicks. The lights stay off.

"Yur," a quiet call.

Yuri doesn’t respond beyond what he perceives to be a noisy exhale, though it can’t possibly be heard two rooms further.

Where else would he be?

Otabek’s steps are effortlessly quiet. Yuri tip-toes between rooms, his heart downright beating his ribs up from the inside with blood vessel filled fists. Should he have taken his costume off, after all? Will it look fine if he sees him washing his face? His make-up is no longer in good shape, and there’s not much he can do about that. Maybe he should wash his hands, instead, a more casual thing.

"Yura, what are you doing?"

He’s stuck frozen in the hall between the spacious guest bathroom and a room that seems to be the kitchen, judging by the fridge, with his back arched in an attempt to keep his weight off his toes; hair splaying messily across his face; and the zip on his costume half-opened, baring his collarbones with how it lays low.

Otabek looks on, quiet, pensive, before he tilts his head in a way that should definitely not be this adorable. Notes that it looks as though Yuri was pacing.

"What if I was?" Yuri retorts, stance relaxing slowly.

All traces of a frown disappear from Otabek’s face, then – he really is too expressive for his own good – and the skin around his eyes smooths out, expression not quite the predecessor of a smile or laugh, but something utterly at peace, as he shrugs his shoulders.

"I forgot to take off my costume, too," he only says, and nods towards the room with the television, silently asking Yuri to follow him.

Next to the couch, a suitcase stands, open like the hungry mouth of a beast, clothes hanging out in a state of disarray. Otabek sits down and fumbles around with the single pieces of clothing, until he seems to find what he has been looking for. He extends the hand with the shirt towards Yuri. Assures him:

"You don’t have to get dressed in front of me."

Yuri thinks back to evenings spent in scratchy hotel robes because of suitcases forgotten with coaches. Thinks to when Lilia would jokingly yell _Qaraghanda_ at him, whenever he stoically answered _Yes_ too many times in a row, and the made-up in his imagination pictures of a rocket’s landing near a small town, no more than fifteen thousand inhabitants. It gave birth to quite a few famous, meaningful people, but Otabek is on the very top of that list, if you ask him.

"It’s fine," Yuri murmurs; he knows he has long boxers underneath, and that it’s not as embarrassing as he makes it out to be. Not any more embarrassing than demanding privacy to put a shirt on in front of another boy, probably.

Otabek hums in response, and though Yuri doesn’t need his help with the zipper – like hell he would ask him voluntarily, even if he did – he’s looking at him as the upper half of his costume falls to his feet.

Otabek’s costume is a two-piece, something distinctly suit-looking. It doesn’t take him long to remove his shirt, just like it doesn’t take long for that tunnel vision of Yuri’s to find its new target in the intricate ink below a collarbone, reaching down onto a – no wonder – toned pectoral.

It’s a rather unusual placement for a vertical tattoo, considering most tend to take up the muscles of a biceps or inner wrists, at best. This way, it makes more sense that Yuri has never seen it before. Of course, it also makes sense that something sharp would settle in his throat, restricting his breathing path. Breathing paralysis, maybe, from a synapsis toxin, was it?

For a figure skater with an abandoned plan of an agriculture major, Otabek sure knows a lot. Makes one wonder if the recital of knowledge is not as casual as Yuri thought, after all.

Makes one wonder that nothing from his side is all that casual – the hopes Yuri didn’t quite allow himself to think out, that those lines are real.  _Were_ real, because they are about to be crossed and crashed and burned and stomped on.

"It’s the Kazakh sun," Yuri half-states, daring himself to move closer. He doesn’t make it further than one step, but the air already seems to grow thinner.

"Point," Otabek nods, pressing his lips together. There’s something devotedly attentive in his gaze, as their eyes meet, and he looks his age in this moment, with the dimple on his right cheek surfacing; though _his age_ is not quite as young as it was when they met for the first, or for the second time.

"What is the mountain for?" Yuri asks, and realizes that he genuinely wants to know.

Just as he wanted to know that Otabek picked up German from the German Kazakhs that lived in his old town, or that, in his humble opinion, Alma-Ata should be the official capital, and not Astana, because it’s so much cooler, or that he really wants to go stargazing, at some point, when he happens to be somewhere where you can actually see the stars.

Yuri doesn’t really care for the stars but, God, does he want to go stargazing with him.

"My grandma lived in the mountains," he says, and Yuri remembers that his grandma wanted him to study agriculture, and that he feels guilty sometimes, for having chosen the ice over her world.

He’s gonna be bold, Yuri decides, as he takes an actual step forward and puts his hands on Otabek’s warm shoulders, pale against tan. His heart, miraculously, doesn’t beat any faster than usual; it’s just good, like that.

"I like it," he says, then, and if his voice sounds a little bit higher-pitched, nobody feels the need to comment on it.

"I’m glad you do," Otabek says, head lifting to look up at Yuri.

Damn him and his fond, wise eyes, Yuri thinks, damn it all, and has to hold himself back not to smash their faces together, because that probably wouldn’t be enjoyable, in his haste. Bites his tongue on asking why he hadn’t told him he got a tattoo, in the first place, because that’s nagging and obviously not cool—

"Yuri Plisetsky," Otabek calls. He lays one of his hands upon Yuri’s, as he moves it further down, guiding his slender fingers to trace the rays of the sun.

"Don’t say my full name, that’s weird," Yuri scrunches his nose, eyes pacing between the ink beneath his palm and Otabek’s face, open and patient, because he’s being indecisive, yet again, about what he wants to look at.

And then he adds: "Dumbass."

Otabek laughs, the dimple on his right cheek deepening, and pulls Yuri into him by his wrists.


End file.
